In the fast-paced world of oil and gas inspection, ensuring safety and compliance is crucial; it’s a necessity. Imagine equipping your field teams with a tool that not only simplifies inspections but also turns regulatory compliance into a streamlined, almost effortless process. 

Enter 1st Reporting, a mobile field reporting application designed to meet the unique demands of enterprise-tier companies like those in your industry. This innovative app allows your teams to document incidents and inspections right from their mobile devices, ensuring no one misses relevant details. With 1st Reporting, managers gain the power to review submissions from anywhere, backed by secure cloud storage and real-time reporting. 

Embrace the future of oil and gas inspections, where compliance is efficient and your teams are always inspection-ready. Let’s dive into how 1st Reporting revolutionizes field reporting, ensuring your operations are safe, compliant, and ahead of the curve.

The Critical Role of Inspections in Oil & Gas Compliance

Each state, province, or territory has specific requirements for fossil fuel pump inspection. Whether it’s an oil pump in an oil field or a gas pump at your local station, all play a crucial role in the fossil fuel industry. The pumps that make it all happen are at the heart of the industry, and those pumps only keep working with regular maintenance and inspection, as you know. Inspections of these different pumps must comply with local and regional regulations in order to sustain a well-managed operation.

In terms of compliance, no single federal standard exists. Frequency is often dictated by a combination of:

• Manufacturer’s recommendations
• Company-specific maintenance protocols
• State-level regulations (some states may have requirements)

Critical pumps are generally inspected more frequently than non-critical ones, as one might expect. All of the required inspections, be them for safety or maintenance, require documentation. Furthermore, your organization needs to maintain records of each inspection for regulatory compliance, process improvement, equipment wear, and failure trend analysis, as well as document due diligence relating to the regulations in your region.

Two things stand out as true, whether we’re talking about oil extraction pumps or gas pumps:

1. They need regular and scheduled inspections.
2. They are spread out across large areas, creating a need for mobile inspections.

Regulatory Body Examples – USA, Canada

USA

• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): Provides technical guidelines and handbooks for jurisdictions overseeing gas pump accuracy. (https://www.nist.gov/)
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): OSHA has a primary focus on worker safety, including hazards related to pumps. (https://www.osha.gov/)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Regulates environmental aspects of oil production, including potential spills and leaks from pumps. (https://www.epa.gov/)

Canada

• Canadian Standards Association (CSA): Develop safety standards that often are adopted into regulations. (https://www.csagroup.org/)
• Measurement Canada: (https://www.canada.ca/en/measurement-canada.html)

Quick Oil and Gas Facts

• As of February 2024, 626 active oil rigs are operating in the United States. ⁽¹⁾
• The top 5 state producers of oil in the United States (2022) are ⁽²⁾:
  • Texas – 1,841,754,000 barrels
  • New Mexico – 574,327,000 barrels
  • North Dakota – 386,041,000 barrels
  • Alaska – 159,611,000 barrels
  • Colorado – 157,532,000 barrels
• In 2020, there were approximately 150,000 gas stations in the US alone. ⁽³⁾

Transforming Gas Inspections with Mobile Technology

You understand the need for oil and gas pump inspections. However, if your teams aren’t using a robust mobile reporting solution, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. In today’s fast-paced mobile world, fossil fuel manufacturers and distributors are migrating to digital solutions. If you don’t make the move, too, you risk being left behind.

If you haven’t yet taken advantage of mobile reporting solutions for your oil and gas pump inspections, I recommend you take a look. There are applications built to work seamlessly with your mobile workforce and use the technology of the smartphone to your organization’s advantage.

Obviously, using a paper and pen report for inspection of oil or gas pumps will crudely work (no pun intended). However, it brings with it all the failings of paper, from poor handwriting to skipped information to the dreaded oily or greasy paper report carried by a technician who’s more hands-on than you’d like. Due to this and about a dozen other reasons, it makes sense to consider upgrading your mobile team inspections and incident processes to a digital format. Let’s look at some of the other features that you’ll want to consider.

Customizable Forms for Tailored Inspection Requirements

For fossil fuel equipment inspections, a mobile tool that provides customizable forms is essential. Customizable forms mean that you can cater your inspection or incident reports to reflect the local regulations, specific equipment parameters, and more.

One such app is our software, known as the 1st Reporting app. We built the app from the ground up with mobile teams like yours in mind. Our application has a robust custom form builder that enables you to create perfectly customized forms. You can even create dynamically linked forms, allowing you to create entire workflows that link relevant forms like an inspection report and repair request, for example.

Real-Time Reporting with Built-In GPS Features

One of the best features of robust mobile reporting apps like 1st Reporting is the built-in GPS features. Imagine being able to pull up your report dashboard and having a map that shows all the reports in an area in real-time. Use the filters and sort by report type. You’ll get a visual snapshot conveying the location of each submitted report of the type selected.

Not all mobile reporting apps have the intuitive features of 1st Reporting. However, we felt it necessary and even prudent to include GPS features in the 1st Reporting app standard – not as a paid upgrade feature.

Enhancing Response Times with Custom Notifications

Enhancing response times and actions is critical when an emergency strikes. Whether it’s an oil pump that’s down or a worker accident, responding quickly is imperative. However, there’s more to response than merely making it happen quickly – there’s making the right decisions based on the correct information. 

During an oil or gas equipment inspection, if a piece of critical equipment goes down, you need to alert the right people and fast. That’s why the best mobile equipment reporting apps use custom notifications. It’s good to know, though, that 1st Reporting took custom notifications to the next level. Let me explain:

The 1st Reporting application has a convenient custom notification system. Not only can you set the report you want to attach the notification, but you can also set who gets the notification, what aspect of the reporting process triggers the notification, and the conditions of the trigger. It takes the idea of customized notifications and smashes it right out of the park for a home run in response efficiency.

Dynamic Linking: A New Avenue for Efficient Follow-Ups

I briefly mentioned earlier that customizing reports with a mobile reporting application like 1st Reporting provides you with the opportunity to link reports dynamically. However, to really get a sense of how powerful these combined features are, you need to consider any of your multi-stage events, such as incidents, accidents, or even equipment inspections.

Let’s say that there’s an incident at a remote site with a worker. Let’s say they trip, and in an attempt to stop their fall, they wind up breaking a wrist. This scenario is common and can happen from something as simple as an untied shoelace. However, let’s look at it from a staged response perspective:

1. The incident occurs. On-site personnel attend the scene and walk the worker to a fellow worker’s car to take them to the hospital.
2. The incident responder opens their mobile device and starts an incident report.
3. The incident report opens and triggers a notification set to trigger upon starting an incident report. A field supervisor receives the notification and calls the responder to ascertain more information.
4. The injured worker receives treatment and provides a supervisor with documentation from the emergency clinic. The supervisor scans the documents using their mobile device camera and attaches them as supplementary information to the original incident report.
5. The incident report is completed, and this action triggers a follow-up response with an injured worker form. 
6. Upon a follow-up form creation event, another notification is triggered, sending a notification to the appropriate HR professional at the company to handle the injury follow-up process.

Considering an incident scenario like the example above, it’s clear to see the benefit of a dynamic linking mobile reporting application with customizable notifications. Using an application like 1st Reporting enables you to automate any workflow with autonomous notifications, create dynamic links between reports, and automate large parts of entire workflows for seamless and organized reporting and response.

Oil Pump Inspection: Elevating Safety and Compliance Standards

As mentioned, each state has its regulations regarding equipment use and safety. Oil pumps and gas pumps are no exception. Although there are international standards, the local rule of law applies.

By creating custom forms that are specific to the region and equipment inspected, you enable your teams to maintain a higher standard of safety compliance.

Specific Needs of Oil Pump Inspections

There are a number of items of interest that are specific to oil and similar fossil fuel pumping systems. Here’s a brief breakdown of the fundamental elements you’ll have to ensure are appropriately represented:

Accuracy and Consistency: Inspections require meticulous recording of various parameters like pressure readings, temperature, flow rates, vibrations, and visual checks for signs of wear or leakage. Any inconsistencies can impact safety and equipment longevity.

Detailed Checklists: Inspections often follow complex checklists specific to the pump type and operational requirements. It’s crucial to follow these checklists closely to prevent oversights. Customizable forms enable your team to create the forms they need that are specific to the equipment in question.

Real-Time Data: Timely identification of potential problems is essential to prevent equipment failures and costly downtime. As mentioned earlier, the custom notification system in the 1st Reporting app helps to alert managers, supervisors, or other important stakeholders you’ve programmed as recipients.

Compliance: Oil pumps often fall under strict safety and environmental regulations. Inspections need to generate documentation to demonstrate adherence to these regulations.

Remote and Harsh Environments: Many oil pumps are located in remote areas under harsh weather conditions. Accessibility and durability are vital needs. As a matter of fact, I used to work for a company that manufactured oil and gas pump controllers for harsh conditions. We built units to handle harsh conditions like those in the North Atlantic, Middle Eastern Desert, and even Arctic conditions. Testing equipment regularly in such extreme conditions is essential to maintaining the functionality of pumping equipment and controller systems.

Leveraging Mobile Reporting for Comprehensive Compliance in Oil & Gas

Ensuring comprehensive equipment information capture during inspections is a critical component of the mobile reporting system. Here are a few of the ways that 1st Reporting is leading by example and helping industry professionals like you to master equipment preventive maintenance and safety inspection operations. Here are a few of the ways that 1st Reporting is on top of the charge to create comprehensive yet succinct reports in the field:

• Offline Mode – A reporting app is only as good as its ability to carry out its functionality. When a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet goes out of range of an internet connection, other mobile reporting apps stop the user in their tracks, only enabling use when a valid connection occurs. However, that’s not very helpful if your equipment inspectors are scattered around an area or have to work in areas with known cell phone range issues. That’s why 1st Reporting was designed to function in an offline mode. The app stores input locally on the device used for the reporting until such time that a connection is re-acquired. Once a connection is reestablished, the app transfers the information back to the secure cloud, enabling collaborative functionality to continue.
• Secure Cloud Storage – 1st Reporting uses secure cloud storage to ensure that your team’s documents are secure and safe. As an ISO-registered company, we help to ensure that a minimum safety standard is not only met – it’s surpassed.
• Media File Friendly –  There’s often nothing more helpful when trying to understand someone else’s equipment inspection than a photo. Moreover, video can tell you so much more about a situation. That’s why at 1st Reporting, one of the first features we made for our app was to ensure that users in the field had the opportunity to upload photos or videos. Not only do pictures and videos provide more information and context, but they also help to review how a situation could have transpired in the first place.

Empowering Compliance: The Future of Field Reporting

In harnessing the innovative capabilities of the 1st Reporting app, the oil and gas sector stands on the brink of a transformative leap towards operational excellence. This mobile field reporting software not only streamlines inspections but also embeds a layer of precision and reliability into compliance processes that were previously unattainable. 

By empowering your teams with real-time data access, customizable forms tailored to specific needs, and unparalleled oversight through GPS tracking, 1st Reporting is your strategic ally in the quest for safety and compliance. 

It’s time to embrace technology, elevate your inspection protocols, and secure a future where efficiency and compliance go hand in hand. Let the 1st Reporting app guide your steps toward a safer, more compliant, and more successful operation in the ever-evolving landscape of fossil fuels.

Article Sources

1. “U.S. Oil & Gas Rigs in Use per Month 2024 | Statista.” 2024. Statista. Statista. 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109332/us-oil-and-gas-rigs-in-use-covid19/.
2. “U.S. Crude Oil Production by State 2022 | Statista.” 2022. Statista. Statista. 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-production-by-us-state/.
3. “What Is the Future of Gas Stations vs EV Chargers?” 2022. Enel X. 2022. https://www.enelxway.com/us/en/resources/blog/what-is-the-future-of-gas-stations-vs-ev-chargers#:~:text=When%20last%20measured%20in%202020,to%20307%20cars%20per%20pump..